Conflict In The House On Mango Street

There are millions of people living below the poverty line, 14.5% in America; many of these people don’t have a home or a nice place to live. In the book “The House on Mango Street”, by Sandra Cisneros, a young girl, Esperanza, struggles with living in a poor neighborhood and her concept of what home is to her. Throughout the book she learns what home really is, and her perception of home changes. While there are other conflicts in the book, this internal/external conflict is the most important because her home influences the events in her life. In the beginning of the book, Esperanza dreams of a nicer home. She has only ever lived in bad neighborhoods: “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous”(5). Throughout the book she talks about the shabiness of her own nieghborhood and dreams of a “real” home. Through this it can be understood that Esperanza is ashamed of her house. Later in the book she says that she says is “tired of looking”(86) at what she can’t have, implying that she doesnt believe her home will get better. The climax of this conflict comes late in the book, when Esperanza is talking to three old women. They tell …show more content…
With Esperanzas conflict of what home is to her, society has a big influence on her thoughts about her home. Society makes her believe that her home and that Esperanza herself are not worth anything: “You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there”(5). Society is the external part of the conflict because the way people view her influence the way they treat her, for example her rape. The internal part of this conflict is that Esperanza believed what society thought about her and her home and it impacted the way she thought about her heighborhood and herself. Undoubtedly, this conflict has the most impact on Esperanza”s